PANABIO: A point-referenced pan-Arctic data collection of benthic biotas

The PAN-Arctic data collection of benthic BIOtas (PANABIO) contains records of benthic fauna identified at genus-level or species-level in field samples taken at point-referenced locations (stations) by means of grabs, towed gear, or seabed imaging. The data are from all major marine Arctic areas, i.e., central Arctic Ocean, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Laptev Sea, Kara Sea, Barents Sea (incl. White Sea), Svalbard waters, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, Canadian Archipelago, Beaufort Sea, and Bering Sea, as well as some adjacent sub-Arctic regions (Sea of Japan, Gulf of Okhotsk). Currently (14 December 2023), the collection includes 27 datasets with a total of 126,388 records (ranging from presence to counts, abundances or biomass) of 2,978 taxa, identified in 11,555 samples taken at 10,596 stations during 1,095 cruises between 1800 and 2014. It is also available in a PostgreSQL-based data warehouse that can be accessed and queried through an open-access frontend web service at https://critterbase.awi.de/panabio.